Siege of Heaven

the door.

‘I want to pray a while with Peter Bartholomew,’ I told them. A thick spear-point swung down to discourage me.

‘Peter Bartholomew is close to God. No one is allowed in his presence.’

‘I would pay for the privilege.’ I held up the purse and the guard felt it, pleased and surprised by the weight. He did not even trouble to haggle. ‘You are only buying a few moments with Peter Bartholomew,’ he warned me. ‘And no souvenirs.’

I ducked into the tent. The guard watched from the door, though I could hardly have stolen anything. By the light coming in through the open flap I could see that the room was as bare as a monk’s cell. Peter Bartholomew lay on a low bed, covered in a linen sheet that would surely become his shroud. Only his face protruded, swaddled in bandages, which left only his eyes and nose exposed. Even that hardly seemed necessary, for his eyes were shut and his breathing faint.

I looked around, then back at the guard.

‘Where are his possessions?’

The guard stiffened. ‘I told you: no relics.’

‘I don’t want relics. But I heard he had a manuscript, a sacred text that foretold many things to come. I hoped to see it.’ I glanced down at Peter to see if he had heard me, but he had not moved.

‘The priest took all Peter Bartholomew’s belongings for safe-keeping — to protect them from thieves and relic-hunters. You said you came to pray,’ he added pointedly.

I knelt beside Peter’s bed, careful not to touch him, and offered a silent prayer for his soul. He had raised himself up like Lucifer to dizzying heights of pride, until he vied with God Himself. But I wondered if that was truly the cause of his demise — or if it had been brought on not by his threat to God, but to men.

I leaned forward, stifling my nose against the stench of burned and rotting flesh, and kissed him on his bandaged cheek.

‘God forgive you, and bring you to His peace at last,’ I whispered.

Five days later, Peter Bartholomew died. They buried him in the high valley, beneath the scorched earth where he had suffered his passion. Many in the army scoffed and said that death had proved him a fraud, but for every man who disbelieved there was another who held that Peter had survived the fire, that he only died from being trampled by his disciples when he emerged. And every day that we were in Arqa, and for years afterwards, pilgrims would gather at his grave and wait, praying for a miracle that never came.

But by then, I had other concerns.

35

The siege of Arqa was failing: everyone knew it. Everyone, at least, except Count Raymond. He had suffered the death of Peter Bartholomew as an almost personal affront, and would not countenance leaving Arqa until he had restored his reputation by its capture. And so his reputation only suffered more.

One evening, three weeks after Peter Bartholomew had been laid in the earth, Raymond summoned Nikephoros and me to his quarters. There was still light in the sky, but in Raymond’s tents all the lamps were lit. His melancholy seemed to have subsided: his eye was bright, and he moved with more energy than I had seen in months. He held a thick piece of paper, with cut strings and broken seals dangling off it like cobwebs.

‘A rider has just delivered this.’ He held it out; Nikephoros reached for it, but instead Raymond passed it to his chaplain who cleared his throat and began reading.

‘From his most serene holy majesty, the basileus and autokrator, the emperor of the Romans Alexios Komnenos; to his brothers in Christ, the princes and captains of the Army of God: blessings and greetings.’

‘Greetings,’ Raymond muttered, waving him on.

‘Though we have been absent from your campaign, not a day has passed when the great deeds you have worked to the glory of God have not been present in our heart. All our empire rejoices at your victories. And now that we have heard your army is poised on the borders of the holy land, ready to strike towards Jerusalem itself, piety and duty command us to leave the comforts of our city and join you in the holy task appointed. Wherefore we ask you to remain in your camp, to gather your strength, and await our arrival on the feast of Saint John the Baptist, the twenty-fourth day of June. Then Greeks and Romans shall be united in one host, the kingdom of Babylon will tremble, and the arch-enemy’s forces will be scattered and destroyed.’

The priest looked up. ‘That is all.’

‘May I see the letter?’

Nikephoros took the paper from the chaplain’s hands and read it silently, fingering the seals between thumb and forefinger. ‘You said the messenger who brought it was Greek. Where is he now?’

‘He said he could not delay. He galloped away the moment I had taken the package from him.’

‘Did he?’ There was a dangerous edge in Nikephoros’ voice, but Raymond did not appear to notice it.

‘This is the best news we could have had. How long have I pleaded with Alexios to come to our aid, to prove his loyalty and to silence those who question his friendship? This gives the lie to Achard’s false accusations. At last the emperor’s authority will bring unity to our fractured host.’

‘The other princes will not wait for the emperor,’ said Nikephoros. He strode beside me as we walked back to our tent. ‘Even if they cared about Arqa — or Raymond — they would crawl over coals to reach Jerusalem before the emperor arrived.’ He gave a dry laugh.

‘Strange that a messenger who had ridden all the way from Constantinople should deliver the message to Raymond’s door, and then gallop away at dusk without even looking in on the Byzantine camp,’ I said noncommittally. I had an unpleasant idea that I knew who had written the letter — and it was not the emperor whose seal adorned it.

‘Stranger still that it was sealed with wax. The emperor seals his correspondence with gold. But the seals were genuine. Not the emperor’s personal seal, but one used by the palace.’ He lifted his hand so I could see the gold signet ring gleaming on his finger. ‘I have one. So did my predecessor, Tatikios.’

‘The ring Duke Godfrey stole from me,’ I murmured. Was this why? Surely that could not have been his purpose when he lured me to Ravendan all those months ago.

Nikephoros walked on in silence, so long that I wondered if he blamed me for what had happened. ‘The letter was a forgery,’ he said at last. ‘So obvious I am surprised even the Franks did not see it. There were half a dozen mistakes in the grammar alone.’

‘But if you saw it was a forgery, why not say so to Count Raymond?’

Nikephoros swung around. ‘Because it served my purposes. Do you think I want to spend the next six months rotting outside Arqa because an old man is too stubborn and too blind to give up a lost cause, and because none of his companions has the strength or will to defy him?’

‘But if Duke Godfrey forged the letter, aren’t you curious as to why?’

He shrugged the question away. ‘Probably because he’s as sick as I am of waiting.’ His voice dropped. ‘The emperor did not send me here as a mark of favour. It was an exile, a diplomatic way to remove me from his court for as long as possible. I think it appealed to his humour to send me to Jerusalem as penance.’

Unconsciously, he played with the embroidered hem of his sleeve. ‘Perhaps I deserved it. But I have served my sentence, and I would like to return to Constantinople. So if a letter appears that will force the barbarians to act, however mysterious and fraudulent it may be, I will not question it.’ He touched me on the shoulder, perhaps the most sincere gesture I ever had from him. ‘We have both been away from home too long.’

I could not argue with that, but it did not soothe my worries.

Sigurd threw a handful of dry grass on the embers of the last night’s fire and poked at it with a stick. Even in the dim half-light before dawn, the coals barely glowed.

‘In England, in my father’s time, the kings could only raise their army for forty days in a year. That concentrated their minds wonderfully on the business of making war.’

‘Do you still miss it?’ I asked.

‘England?’ Sigurd sounded surprised by the question. ‘Of course. In the same way that a one-armed man